Solo drivers on expressways during rush hours are a primary cause of congestion, pollution and exploding expressway construction costs. The best solution is to get these drivers into car pools and/or public transportation. The car-pool lane is expensive and has not been effective enough to constitute a significant solution. Public transportation is probably the ultimate solution but given the addiction to the private automobile, this is a way down the pike. There is a compelling need for a short term solution vis-a-vis the private automobile.
Toll lanes have been suggested as one means to solve this problem and the technology for automatically accounting for traffic on toll lanes and/or toll roads is well known and highly advanced. The problem with these systems is twofold:
1. Additional equipment is generally required in the vehicle (transponders), and
2. Expensive portions of the expressway are committed instead of use of the entire expressway.
The difficulty with the requirement for equipment in the vehicle is more than the cost of the equipment. Commitments must be made and accounts set up to provide for effective automatic charges for use of the expressway. The prior art utilizing transponders is described in part in the following patents:
1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,303,904, Dec. 1, 1981, Chasek, xe2x80x9cUniversally applicable In-motion and automatic toll Paying System Using Microwavesxe2x80x9d
2. U.S. Pat. No. 3,964,024, Jun. 15, 1976, Hutton, et al., xe2x80x9cTransponder for an Automatic Vehicle Identification System.xe2x80x9d
3. U.S. Pat. No. 5,602,919, Feb. 11, 1997, Hurta, et al., xe2x80x9cSpeedup for Monetary Transactions for Using a Transponder in Conjunction with a Smartcard.xe2x80x9d
4. U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,234, Oct. 6, 1998, Slavin, et al., xe2x80x9cToll Collection Systemxe2x80x9d
5. U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,320, May 16, 2000, d""Hont, et al. xe2x80x9cAutomatic Vehicle Identification System Capable of Vehicle lane Discrimination.xe2x80x9d
A very advanced traffic management and control system on Toronto""s highway E407(see http://407etr.com/home.phtml) uses license plate detection for vehicle identification in addition to transponders. However they level an additional charge for license plate detection probably because of the excess costs associated with transmitting image data instead of the more advanced prior conversion of image data by means of xe2x80x9cOptical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
The primary problem with prior art solutions is the absence of a means of identifying the occupancy status of the subject vehicle. One way to do this is by means of infrared examination of the vehicle (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,226, Apr. 6, 1999, Robinson, et al., xe2x80x9cTraffic Control Systemsxe2x80x9d). This method, although it addresses the main problem, looks complicated and expensive and is inferior to the improvement provided by my invention.